|
The 1980's were drawing to a close, and Wes Craven, who had introduced Fred Krueger and Nightmare On Elm Street to the world, had effectively been stripped of control of his self-created franchise by the higher-ups at New Line Cinema. His recourse here, after the tepid response to his ambitious 1987 voodoo offering The Serpent And The Rainbow, was to return to the slasher genre, introducing a new villain with sequelization potential.
The maniac here is a deranged television repairman with the unlikely name Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi), who just loves to butcher entire families with a lethal hunting knife. Unmerciful, unrepentant and unafraid, Pinker wreaks considerable havoc until he crosses the wrong guy. Young high-school football hero Jonathan Parker (Peter Berg), who has some kind of psychic connection with Pinker, endures the murders of his entire household--and even his girlfriend--before snaring the killer in a police trap. Conviction is immediate, and the death sentence comes quickly for Pinker. And it is delivered swiftly, except that a fatal flaw occurs during the frying. Pinker, that rascally devil, has been in cahoots with various demonic forces which make him immune to the lethality of the electric chair.
After the fiasco of Pinker's so-called "execution," with a medical attendant injured and Pinker's body missing, Jonathan comes to realize that the villain still lives as an electrically-charged entity who can possess the average by-stander. Moreover, his own psychic sense has lately been entertaining visions of his recently-murdered girlfriend--plus scores of other Pinker victims--admonishing him to fight the good fight.
Jonathan has an ally in his estranged dad Don Parker (Michael Murphy), who is a respected police detective. His faithful football teammates and coach from school are also ready to back him up in his death-struggle with the spectre of Horace Pinker. Eventually, a showdown at a TV tower, in which Pinker briefly possesses the senior Parker, illustrates the villain's weakness--he can be fooled. Parker feigns a heart attack, and Pinker deserts his body, heading for greener pastures that won't be revealed here. "I didn't know you had heart problems," Jonathan notes. Dad's response: "I don't. I know that, and you know that. Pinker didn't."
Portions of Shocker are unnervingly self-derivative of Craven's past-catalog. The opening segment mirrors that of his 1984 opus Nightmare On Elm Street, in which the killer--face unseen to the audience--prepares his tools. The fact that Horace Pinker and Fred Krueger share death by burning (in one form of another), plus the element of the protagonist enduring pre-cognitive dreams, don't exactly scream "originality." More could be mentioned, but let's cut ol' Wessy-boy some slack here. No hackneyed follow-ups to Shocker ever got made, and despite Pit Of Horror's largely pro-sequel slant, this is a good thing. There's even a hysterical sequence in which hero and villain journey through television broadcasts and turn up as walk-ons in some classic TV footage--a concept that Forrest Gump would try five years later to pass off as innovative. As a one-time outing, Horace Pinker is a decently-intimidating villain, and the picture includes enough of Craven's
trademark surrealism to land this film its place in the annals of primo 80's horror.
>>Back<< >>Archive Index<<
|
